


the cosmos is within us (we are made of starstuff)

by nereid



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 23:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20455568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: prompt: I went to sleep a poet and woke up a fraud





	the cosmos is within us (we are made of starstuff)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clytemnestras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/gifts).

There's a girl. There's always a girl at the beginning, a flawed beginning, a flawed being, a body shaped like a girl, wielding unimaginable power it needs to learn to unlock to save the queendom, or a queen whose unimaginable power needs to be contained to save the queendom.

Sometimes, both.

This is the beginning, or the end. Repetitions and circles are all there is anyway, which is to say this is the beginning and the end, which is to say it's neither, and it doesn't matter (has never mattered, will never have mattered).

The story, though, yearns to be told as much as the writer yearns to tell it, as much as the reader doesn't yet realize she wants to read it.

So.

So: there's a boy.

There's a boy, as boys can sometimes be found in stories, some blond or dark haired or both and always strangers at first and sometimes also strangers again at the end of the stories. This is the story of a girl (and a boy) or two girls (and four boys), depending on your perspective. There is a boy, one of them or two of them, who was always there first, because time is linear, or _because you believe_ time is linear, but ultimately it doesn't matter in the least which of the boys was there first. (Ultimately, a boy does not matter, at least not here, after everything, with the apples and the perpetuating tent, at the end of a world, (a) girl(s) matter(s)). One of the boys or two of the boys are there eternally making promises never to leave and they really never do, and that should feel more terrifying but then it doesn't, but that's already the middle of the story or maybe just the beginning, or maybe another story entirely. Some of the boys look younger than they are and feel younger than they should, and their lips feel young but their words taste old. _You are magnificent, I will always choose you, It was epic, Come along, oh warrior princess. 2000 years, I waited for you_. Mostly they talk about forever and always and love, always love, but to be honest - the girl or the girls, their memories are mostly of the other times, the less important talks, about fish fingers and ancient chili recipes and custard and honeymoons and Friday night family dinners.

(Was it worth it?)

There's a girl, as girls can sometimes be found in stories, some dark haired or red haired or both. This is the story of two girls and four boys, or two girls, depending on your perspective. Maybe it's all one girl, and maybe neither of them are girls. There is an ending to the story, death most likely, and most likely - not theirs. It's just all stories have to end somewhere - even theirs.

This is a story after all the others, when there is no narrative thread left powerful enough to bind their muscles to their bones, when there is the realization that narratives are all that binds our muscles to our bones and keeps our blood flowing. The story after their vision goes dark (or blood red) and everything disappears, except nothing. Suddenly, there is so much nothing, their skin hurts with the incredible lightness of it. When they move their bones next, they're without their usual paralyzing weight and she laughs (they laugh) and look at each other (as if looking in the mirror). There is one or two of them, one with longer legs and one with less red hair, and even when nothing is anymore, neither of them are at peace.

"I'm writing a novel," one of them says. The red haired one maybe.

"I wanted to do that, once upon a time," the shorter girl says and they write.

"What happened?" the girl asks, sitting down.

Elena laughs.

"I ran out of paper."

Amy's lips twitch upwards.

(No one speaks about what happens next. Some things are sacred in a way that you can talk about them and make them worth more. Like memories of the chocolate muffins your brother baked that maybe contained pot or the memories of your parents before they were a crack in a wall. If you want to make a dead memory sacred, you can always talk about it. Feel it swell in your chest and exhale it and let it breathe and consecrate the air around it and consecrate the person you are going to be. Some things become sacred by not talking about them. The evening breeze, knowing how to touch someone without being told, holding a girl's hand in the dark. Those things are as profane as the words you use to disturb the air by speaking them, because love means more when she looks at you like that than when she talks about forever, as if either of you was presented with a choice.)

Words, those were the boys' game, after all. The girls are young (and timeless and bodiless) and they don't know yet what their game is.

"Let's not write anymore," the red haired girl pleads, at the same time that Elena picks up a pen where previously there was nothing but air and dust, and conjures Amy's words in the air, not shiny or neat, just in Amy's usual handwriting, readable and functional and edges a bit too sharp.

Amy's hands fly to her throat and mouth to stop more words for flowing out. Elena's hand is steady, if it is anything.

"I think there was a story about this somewhere, I think I read it a millennium ago," Elena traces her left-hand fingers through dust, her right-hand fingers tracing their words in the air.

"What did the story say?" Amy asks, releasing the grip on her throat slowly, expecting to see her words being written in the air in front of her again, expecting to feel their grip on her throat instead. There is nothing instead. Magic will do that, make a mockery of expectation.

"Something about a girl and about eating an apple," Elena says and shrugs. "It doesn't matter now, does it?"

(It's not that she ran out of paper.)

(So much blood used to be in both of them, and all of it used for purposes that had nothing to do it them, their bodies stolen from them, so careless. It used to flow, this blood and life, and it seemed like it would never stand still, and they wanted it to. For hours and seconds at a time, when no one was there to listen, praying to unreachable goddesses, take this life away, just this one. I'll deal with another one, but this one, could you not take away this one, this fake one. Their boys leave them in the end. In the end, there is no one to save, which means there is no one to save them.)

They walk for hours, step after step. They leave blood as their bread crumbs, but it dissipates instantly. There is no life here, so there can be no blood. Elena feels hungry. She thinks she shouldn't be, being dead and all, it does not make sense to want blood anymore, and yet. (There are different types of girls and there are different types of hunger; neither of them quite understand this yet.)

Amy makes them a tent out of sheer will and some willow branches, and they curl underneath it and stare at the dark and they want to imagine that they are seeing stars, so Elena pulls off Amy's clothes and Amy is the sky and Elena places the stars on her with her tongue.

Neither of them chose this, but neither of them had a choice, so it's no one's fault. Someone killed the world and it wasn't them, but there used to be whole universes within them, and this, right now, it feels so ---

"Gods," Elena says and smiles and stretches out her arms towards the sky.

"Writers," Amy adds, and lies down on her side and places a kiss on Elena's shoulders.

("The same," the stars sing in unison.)

Time turns to dust here, and everything else does as well. No boys to saved and no boys to be saved from and no boys to be saved by. A girl, another girl. An apple, a hunger, no end. Amy remakes their tent every night and sees their yesterday reflected at them in the dust that they wake up lying in in the morning. Amy builds a sculpture of a police box in the dust and stares at it for hours. Elena rebuilds it when it inevitably falls apart and thinks of fangs. Amy rubs sand out of her eyes that isn't there and thinks of blue. They want more, and a writer cannot conjure up a universe, but one of them takes the other's hand into her own. All of their skin is forever cold.


End file.
